Book and I

"Book and I are now the best of friends ..."
Enter the world of Tristan Lambert, an aspiring young author who, having found some early success with his first novel, finds himself suffering from writer’s block.
Bored and disillusioned with the empty promise of the new millennium, he cannot seem to find the inspiration he is looking for, until one day he discovers a mysterious antique shop.
Here he meets "Book", his seductive new companion, whose mesmerising influence gradually threatens to take over his life.

He didn’t sleep at all that night and why should he? The answer had escaped his mind when events came quietly creeping over. But he was old now – too old for this – and things long forgotten were crawling out like worms from a neglected tomb. Something had haunted him for years: the fear of what? The shadow of failure that had hung over him like a dark, foreboding cloud. He knew now, with the bitterness of hindsight, he had achieved no more than a dribbling of success that came slowly but then quickly left him with nothing but a graveyard of fond memories. He considered his family; what had driven them away? He tried to remember. It was like some black magic trick: one minute they were there, and the next — gone! Was it his fault? He supposed that it was, as was everything else he had done since entering that strange abandoned antique place. He ran his tongue across his teeth and lips, which felt bone dry. He had not drunk or eaten anything for days and even if he wanted to he could not leave his bed. Without warning, the unbidden thought arose in him: It’s killing me.He had hoped he was immune to what had plagued him once upon a time, but in the darkest hours when the shadows grew more real, he had seen It through the curtain’s light, the golden curves pressed against the silk, the peacock greens and purple hues shimmering before his tired gaze. For a moment, It had disappeared and his heart with it, only to return, a Lilith of desire, a succubus hovering over him; stealing his breath, his life, his soul; the sheen on his brow gathering. And then he knew, with the certainty of someone who would meet the soil, soon it would come for him.He closed his eyes and heard a terrible groan of suffering that could have been his own. Perhaps It did not exist, after all; It was not human; It was just a thing, an object: a sick old man’s illusion. There should be no fear by morning light. After what seemed like hours but was only minutes, he dared to look again, his alarm turning to terror when, on beholding the large ophidian form, his body, cold and rigid like a corpse, would not move. He blinked his eyes in a small act of defiance, but it was no use. He knew that the nightmares that live on in daytime were the ones that would haunt you forever. He felt his finger flex: the one that stroked his wife’s cheek as she lay in bed; the one that scratched his chin to produce an idea; the one that could pull the trigger of a gun; and enter The Word on a page before it disappeared.